Tea Party Takes Wisconsin Victory on the Road

Tea party and conservative activists are hoping to turn their Wisconsin victory over unions into a roadmap for their efforts in several other presidential battleground states, where big labor has long-dominated the political landscape.

According to Politico, the conservatives are planning to spend a lot of money and put a lot of people on the ground in such states as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in a push to not only help Romney win the White House but increase the Republican margins in the House and Senate.

Politico reported Monday that the tea party group FreedomWorks wants to put at least 18 campaign distribution points in Wisconsin, 40 in Texas, and possibly 100 in Ohio.

Brendan Steinhauser, the group’s federal and state campaigns director, told Politico conservative activists are already beginning to coordinate strategy in Ohio and Pennsylvania, considered two of the most important swing states.

“We’re going to be building in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania,” Steinhauser said. “North Carolina and Indiana are kind of your Tier 2-type places. And then you look at your Tier 3-type places, maybe something like Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire.”

At the same time, the Tea Party Express is set to begin holding rallies in many of the same states over the coming weeks. The group American Majority, meanwhile, has ground operations established in five key battleground states and is planning to expand efforts in Virginia and possibly Missouri, Politico reported.

All of the conservative groups, including Americans for Prosperity (AFP), are now coordinating their efforts nationwide as they did in Wisconsin, where they helped Gov. Scott Walker beat back a recall election that began with union protests over his push to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.

“We had something [in Wisconsin] we never had before in a really big fight — and that’s a ground game that matched what the other side was doing; and I think that’s new,” AFP President Tim Phillips told Politico.